The US has a problem with addiction and it has become a bigger problem in Philadelphia

DEA and DEA Search for Fentanyl Pills in SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers

But there was no candy inside the boxes marked SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers, the sheriff’s department said. Instead, they contained what authorities believe to be thousands of the dangerous pills.

Heroin was beaten by the synthetic drug Fentanyl. xylazine was added to street Fentanyl to make it last longer, according to Sarah Laurel, the harm reduction group that employs Sherman.

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced last month that they had seized more than 10,000,000 Fentanyl pills across the nation during a months-long operation.

But with drug use among teens at a historic low, the soaring overdose deaths are likely not the result of more adolescents using drugs, but of the increasing risks the drugs themselves, one of the study’s authors said.

The pills’ colorful appearance is a “deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the alert.

The Los Angeles Police Department said they were investigating multiple overdoses and one of which resulted in a death at a high school. The students are thought to have bought Percocet pills.

After the overdoses, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced its campuses will be equipped with doses of naloxone, a drug used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drug overdoses, including from fentanyl.

Many public health experts believe that if more people had the spray at home or in their bags, many deaths could be avoided.

How to Stop Fentanyl from Dosing: A Small Step Towards a Long Lived, Safe and Effective Antidote

Learn how to spot an overdose. When someone overdoses from fentanyl, breathing slows and their skin often turns a bluish hue. If you think someone is overdosing, call 911 right away. If you are worried that your loved one might have been exposed to the drug, you may want to consider buying Narcan, a medicine that can reverse an overdose in just a few minutes.

Talk to your loved ones. The best way to stop the use of Fentanyl is to educate your family about it. Let us know what Fentanyl is and if it can be found in pills purchased online or from friends. Aim to establish an ongoing dialogue in short spurts rather than one long, formal conversation.

The spray, which was approved as an over-the-counter overdose antidote in 1971, is safe and effective even in infants and that’s why the 19 voting panelists recommended that it be made easily available. And, the panels concluded, naloxone does not require medical training to use.

Side effects, typically symptoms associated with withdrawal, were relatively negligible compared with the medicine’s far greater lifesaving benefit, panel members said. Hundreds of thousands of lives are thought to have been saved by the use of Naloxone.

The drug blocks the effects of opiates on the brain. Opiates can depress the respiratory system and other bodily functions. By interrupting that connection before it’s too late, Narcan can wake a person from a lethal stupor. The instructions on the two-pack carton recommend that the Narcan administrator give one dose to a person suspected of having an overdose and then call for help. If the person does not rouse within two or three minutes, a second dose can be applied in the other nostril.

How terrible is it to be? A warning warning on the dangers of using Xylazine in Philadelphia’s street fentanyl

“It is absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.

The need for help has become more urgent over the last three years, as the animal tranquilizer xylazine, also called tranq, has become a bigger part of Philly’s street fentanyl supply. Even if you snort it or smoke it, it can cause large wounds that wont heal, no matter where you inject it. Infections are common and can even lead to amputations.

The nature of America’s addiction crisis has changed. It’s a place to buy heroin, under the elevated railway line, a short distance away from the business and tourist centers of downtown.

What happened to Maggie: When xylazine starts to become too dangerous to inject into a person’s breathing and blood pressure

A user, Maggie, told CNN what she’s seen. “You shoot up and you miss, you get a sore. She said that if you do not take care of your sore, you will end up in a hospital with a hole. It had happened to her. She had a half-dollar-sized wound after it started out as a peck and then it got bigger and she lost her skin. I could have lost my hand.

Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, an emergency physician and addiction medicine specialist at Temple University Hospital, said patients started to have major wounds that were different from typical injection drug use. “These wounds were a lot deeper, a lot more severe, there were big necrotic areas,” he said. “They were deep down into tendons. When you can see the bones, we were seeing a lot of patients that were requiring amputations.

“Nobody was coming to Kensington to buy tranq, they were coming to get heroin,” said Laurel of the Savage Sisters group. “You don’t go to your drug dealer and say, ‘Do you have a nutrition label with this?’ You don’t get upset when you get what you want. She said that whatever you get, you eventually feel like you have to do it.

The problem has grown far beyond Philadelphia or even the entire state of Pennsylvania, which saw its percentage of overdose deaths involving xylazine jump from 2% to 26% between 2015 and 2020.

That might slow the spread of xylazine, first noted in Puerto Rico in the 2000s, across the nation. But in Kensington, there could be more unintended consequences.

In addition, Xylazine slows a person’s breathing, heart rate and blood pressure to dangerously low levels, due to it’s central nervous system depressant nature. People have reported snorting, injecting, and inhaling it.

The Case for a Better Treatment of Addiction and Alcoholism: A Case Study in Savage Sisters, California

D’Orazio said there needed to be more affordable housing, more access to health care, fewer restrictions on drugs that treat addiction, and less stigma on what he says is a chronic disease, like diabetes. But he added there also needs to be more focus on prevention of drug use disorder, which means looking at mental health care. His patients tended to have suffered childhood trauma, like abuse and neglect. There needs to be more “early intervention for people with trauma in their life,” he said.

Maurice, whose voice has been hoarse since he was injected in the neck with tranq and fentanyl a couple of months ago, said: “A lot of people have pain from their past they’re dealing with, and they try to numb themselves.”

In conversations with CNN, several people brought up painful past experiences like rape or abuse almost immediately, as though those memories were simmering just below the surface. “It has been a long life, and I need to face things,” said the 66 year old. I need to get some type of therapy. This thing happened to me when I was five years old that shouldn’t have happened to me.”

“The people that are out here numbing their pain with substances, whether it’s heroin, alcohol, cocaine, we need to address the pain, we need to stop isolating the substance and look beyond it,” she said.

Savage Sisters offers several mental health programs for people in its recovery houses, and Laurel says it’s very expensive, but worth it. She had to work hard to raise money. “Until it directly affects them, nobody cares. It is ugly. It isn’t fun to donate money or time, right? It’s hard. It’s rough. It’s sad. It feels really bad. I needed to come up with ways to convince people that we are worth saving.

Some news organizations have called xylazine “the zombie drug.” Laurel hates that term. “The only way that you can get rid of a zombie is by killing their brain,” she said. I don’t understand why you would talk about my friends. Why would you say that about a human? It’s already hard enough trying to get people to care about us.”

Users say that xylazine can extend the high of fentanyl because of its fast-acting nature.

He said that a federal plan to address xylazine was in the works and that the White House looked at it as an emerging threat. The FDA said it had taken action to stop the imports of xylazine.

Because the tranquilizer isn’t an opioid, its effects can’t be reversed by the opioid overdose antidote naloxone (aka Narcan). According to the National Institute of Health, public health officials worry that the xylazine in the supply could make it less effective for some overdoses.

Research suggests that tranq has been part of Puerto Rico’s illegal opioid scene since the early 2000s and made its way to Philadelphia shortly after. It was first seen in toxicology reports there beginning in 2006, according to Substance Use Philly, a division of the city’s health department.

In November, the Food and Drug Administration distributed guidance to health care professionals warning of the risk of patients being exposed to xylazine in illicit drugs.

In late February, it was reported that it had taken steps to restrict unauthorized imports of the substance and to give FDA staff the ability to detain any shipments that appear to be in violation of the law.

Senator Chuck Schumer’s Plan to Prevent xylazine-Related Overdoses: A First Look at the Senate Budget

Chuck Schumer, the majority leader of the Senate, held a press conference this week to discuss his plan to prevent xylazine-related overdoses, according to North Country Public Radio.

Increased funding for the federal program that gives law enforcement agencies money to hire more officers and raising the budget for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration are included in the plan.